


Apparently Laughter Can Kill (or LAPD Case #2014-0401)

by crackerscheese



Category: Fake News, Fake News RPF
Genre: Abandoned Warehouses, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Police, Gen, Joke Cartels, Late Night Comedy Hosts, Los Angeles Police Department, Murder Mystery, Murder by Laughter, Organized Crime, Parody, Police Report
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 18:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1480390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackerscheese/pseuds/crackerscheese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detectives Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert investigate the murder of Jay Leno, leader of the Burbank-centric joke cartel NBC. Parody of a typical murder case and is written in the form of a police report.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparently Laughter Can Kill (or LAPD Case #2014-0401)

Date: 02-11-14  
Date of Incident: 02-07-14  
Type of Crime: Homicide

Case Number: #2014-0401  
Officer: Detective Stephen Colbert  
Badge Number: #10172005

Narrative:

On February 7, 2014, a Friday, at 0835 hours my partner Det. Jon Stewart and I arrived at 3000 W Alameda Ave in response to a report of a suicide. The victim, James Douglas Muir Leno, was splayed out on the floor of the living room. The victim wore a leather jacket, a blue work shirt and jeans. There were no signs of assault on the victim. There were also no obvious cause of death. The evidence collected at the crime scene were nine joke cards that were scattered around the body. They were taken to the lab for testing.

At the police division, I checked the background of the victim. He was known as Jay Leno, a big-time joke maker that headed the NBC joke cartel. Leno made joke cards branded with the NBC logo and distributed them through the cartel. The cartel handled the illegal joke-dealing business around Burbank. Leno reportedly was about to retire from the business before he took his life in his home. It was odd that Leno committed suicide right before his retirement.

Det. Stewart and I went to the morgue the next morning to receive the autopsy report. Jay Leno died at around 12:30 A.M. Friday morning. There were definitely no signs of physical assault on the victim. The autopsy revealed the victim’s cause of death: He laughed himself to death. His laughter caused his esophagus to close up the larynx, and the lack of oxygen caused the victim to choke, pass out and eventually die. 

The evidence came back from the lab and none of the cards had any fingerprints other than the victim’s. Further examination of the cards revealed that cards were branded with a cartel logo that was not the one the victim headed. Leno was known to only laugh at his own jokes, not of ones from other cartels. The suspicious circumstances of Leno’s death switched the case from a suicide to a murder investigation. 

Det. Stewart and I looked up the brand and questioned Jimmy Kimmel, leader of ABC, the joke cartel whose logo was branded on the cards. Kimmel told us that he was certain that the cartel did not sell Leno the cards directly, and he had an airtight alibi for the crime. Det. Stewart asked him if he knew of anyone who would try to pin Leno’s death on his cartel and Kimmel listed the names of a few ex-cartel members and Jimmy Fallon, the next in line to head the NBC cartel. He was a frequent customer of Kimmel’s cartel and he apparently bought some prime monologue jokes in bulk a week before Leno’s death.

Det. Stewart parted ways with me as he investigated the ex-cartel members lead. I went over to the sixth floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza to question Fallon. I noticed that joke cards from various cartels—NBC, ABC, TBS and CBS—littered the floors of his apartment. Fallon did not have an alibi, therefore he became our prime suspect. I took him down to the police division for questioning. 

While conducting the interrogation, I observed that Fallon consistently giggled at inappropriate times during the questioning. I demanded that he tell me what was going on and he reluctantly confessed that he has been buying jokes from cartels other than NBC. When asked why, he explained that he was addicted to the product he was selling. He needed to giggle over several good monologue jokes to get through the day. He has bought joke cards from other cartels to sustain him when the NBC jokes weren’t cutting it for him, which was all the time. As I prepared to release him from police custody I asked him who he thought did commit the murder. Amongst others he mentioned Conan O’Brien, a former member of NBC who left the cartel to create his own cartel, TBS. Fallon told me that O’Brien left the cartel on bad terms and that he might know more about the circumstances of Leno’s death.

I decided to go to O’Brien first because he had the most interesting history with Leno out of the people Fallon referred to. I went to the O’Brien Comedy Club over in Burbank. Andy Richter, O’Brien’s right-hand man, opened the door and let me in. He led me to the office where O’Brien was. O’Brien was in the middle of making that day’s round of jokes and he looked startled when he realized that a cop in the room. I reassured him that I was only here to ask about Leno’s murder and not the numerous illegal activities O’Brien had gotten himself into. Relieved, O’Brien said he hadn’t seen Leno in a while—ever since their falling out Leno and O’Brien have not spoken to each other. I asked him to explain their falling out further and O’Brien told me that years ago he originally was supposed to take over the NBC cartel from Leno but Leno refused to retire. When I said that he must have resented Leno over that O’Brien laughed it off, saying that any animosity he felt towards Leno was long since gone. However, the way his fists clenched at the mere mention of Leno told a different story.

O’Brien continued on to tell me about David Letterman, another ex-cartel member. He was passed up when the then NBC cartel leader Johnny Carson choose Leno to head the cartel. He disappeared after that, but rumor has it that even though Letterman has set up shop in New York City, he still has people that watch over the NBC cartel and report back to him. O’Brien said that maybe Letterman caught wind of Leno’s retirement and paid Leno a personal visit. Meetings between Leno and Letterman have never been known to be peaceful, so maybe this one ended in Leno’s death. I thanked O’Brien for his time, and O’Brien told me that Richter was his alibi. They were selling jokes outside the club from late Thursday night until early Friday morning.

I went back to the police division to find out Letterman’s whereabouts on the day of Leno’s death. After a few phone calls I received confirmation that Letterman was in New York during the time of death. I wondered if any of his men did it but after a few hours of digging I hit a dead end. Det. Stewart came back from interviewing Kimmel’s ex-cartel members and said that he had hit a dead end too. We were about to look the case over from the beginning when our first and only witness came forward.

When we went over to meet Craig Ferguson, he made sure to ask us not to let word get around that he was a witness to Leno’s murder. He was a member of Letterman’s cartel, CBS, and he was one of the people spying on NBC for Letterman. He did not want any of the NBC cartel to know he was hanging around NBC’s territory. After we agreed to keep it quiet Craig said that while he crossed a street near Leno’s house, patrolling the area, he noticed a car in Leno’s garage. The car jumped out at him because it contrasted heavily with the other expensive sport cars Leno was known to own. Despite the darkness Craig got a good look at the car—it was a Ford Taurus.

Det. Stewart became excited when he learned about that piece of information. He explained that he read O’Brien file during a prior case. He was busted for possession of jokes years ago and he was arrested in his car…which was a Ford Taurus. Thrilled at the prospect of a new lead, Det. Stewart went to find out O’Brien’s place of residence while I got Craig’s statement. After I finished, Det. Stewart had already figured out the address to O’Brien’s house in L.A. 

By the time we arrived at his house O’Brien was long gone. Andy Richter was around though, and after he saw our warrant he allowed us to root through O’Brien’s car. After a little digging, Stewart found a dozen joke cards, all branded with ABC logo and smudged with fingerprints. Now that we were pretty certain that O’Brien’s car was involved in the murder we interviewed Richter. After a little bit of prodding Richter admitted that O’Brien did not have an alibi, he actually left the club briefly around Leno’s time of death. O’Brien has had some underlying anger directed at Leno after O’Brien left NBC and after he came back to the club he looked happier than he had been in years. When Andy found out Leno was dead, he was not surprised. O’Brien was a bit evasive about where he had been that night and now it seemed obvious why. Richter agreed to testify against O’Brien when the case went to court, and he directed us towards where we might find him. “Studio 6A”, an abandoned warehouse that O’Brien frequented while he was with NBC, was filled with fake passports and anything else O’Brien would need to get out of the country.

Now that it looked like O’Brien was our killer, we called for back-up before leaving the house. A couple of police cars met us near the series of warehouses that lined the San Francisco Bay Area later that evening. The warehouse nicknamed “Studio 6A” looked pretty much abandoned, but a quick look inside showed that the warehouse was filled with the most up-to-date forged documents that helped criminals leave the country. It was obviously the place O’Brien would go to if he committed Leno’s murder. 

A search around the premises revealed that warehouse was empty. We were about to declare this a false lead when an officer spotted an open window near the rear of the building. He had found some stray red hairs on the windowsill. It was determined that O’Brien had escaped before we arrived. Since he was the only officer small enough to fit, Stewart went through the window and looked around for O’Brien. He reported that he had spotted O’Brien running across the beach that was beneath the small cliff the warehouses were on. Det. Stewart ran to go after O’Brien and the rest of us set about trying to use our police cars as a barricade on the beach. Because of this, I was not present during the chase and events that led to O’Brien’s arrest. With Det. Stewart’s permission, I have inserted an excerpt of Stewart’s report that details what occurred on the beach.

_I navigated my way down the cliff and soon was chasing O’Brien across the beach. O’Brien’s long legs were hard to catch up to, but with much determination I started to close the distance between us. O’Brien realized that he was being followed, and he sped up. I was about to lose him when O’Brien spotted the police barricade up ahead. He began to run left towards the cliff that led to the beach but halted when he saw the police officers that were waiting for him. Cornered on three sides O’Brien ran the only direction he could—towards the ocean. I ran to stop him as he started to wade in. Before I caught up to him O’Brien pulled out his gun and aimed it at me._

_I held up my hands in surrender as O’Brien inched towards me. I sensed his hesitance to shoot by the way he held the gun so I decided to distract him by drawing out his bitter feelings towards Leno. With my urging, O’Brien revealed that he never got over what Leno did to him back when he was with NBC. O’Brien admitted that when he had heard of Fallon’s promotion he went over to Leno’s house. He had enough sense to not admit anything else though. Unfortunately for him, O’Brien did not notice that my partner, Detective Colbert, had snuck up on him from behind. Colbert quickly snatched the gun from O’Brien’s hands and Colbert arrested him. We then headed back to the police division to interrogate him._

In the interrogation room O’Brien clammed up and did not detail why he was at Leno’s. Det. Stewart told him that all the evidence we had gathered points to him as the murderer. When I added that Richter ruined his alibi, O’Brien’s composure shattered. At first he made violent threats against Richter but he became more subdued when I pointed out that maybe he should confess now that even his friend has abandoned him.

After some deliberation, O’Brien said that he went over to Leno’s house on the night of the murder. The initial reason for the visit was for O’Brien to air out his grievances with Leno before he retired. O’Brien went to ring the doorbell and Leno answered and spoke warmly to O’Brien despite their history. This enraged O’Brien, since to him it seemed like Leno had simply moved on and did not care about what had happened. O’Brien kept those feelings himself as Leno let him into his house. O’Brien tried to be straightforward about why he was still angry at Leno after all this time but after every attempt Leno’s demeanor remained unaffected and he responded as if O’Brien’s complaints did not mean much. Instead of making O’Brien feel as if a burden was being lifted off him, the visit was making him more aggravated. 

When he finally asked Leno why he came back from retirement to take over NBC again, Leno told O’Brien that at the time he did not think O’Brien was funny enough to write the high quality jokes that the cartel distributed throughout Burbank. Insulted, O’Brien was desperate enough to make Leno change his mind the only way he knew how: by telling jokes. O’Brien told Leno the funniest jokes he knew, ones so pure that Leno was cracking up within seconds. O’Brien had never seen Leno so full of mirth over jokes before, especially for jokes he didn’t write himself. O’Brien reveled in the feeling of being better than Leno for once, and he did not want the feeling to stop. Even when Leno conceded and said that he was funny O’Brien did not stop making jokes, and Leno could not help but laugh at them.

After a while, the speed at which O’Brien was doling out one-liners became too much for Leno. He started to choke on his own laughter. He begged for O’Brien to stop talking and let him catch his breath. After a moment’s hesitation though, O’Brien cruelly chose to tell more one joke, a brilliant joke that Leno laughed while choking on his laughter. Soon though, Leno stopped choking and went still. O’Brien did not need to check Leno’s pulse to know that Leno was dead. Instead of freaking out, O’Brien felt relief and even pride that he killed Leno by the very thing Leno gave others through his joke cards--laughter. Giggling over the irony, O’Brien went back outside to his Ford Taurus to gather some joke cards he had bought from Jimmy Kimmel’s cartel awhile back. He wiped them of his fingerprints. He then went back into the house and spread the jokes around Leno’s body with gloves to make it look like someone from the ABC cartel murdered Leno. He made sure he did not leave any evidence behind before driving back to the O’Brien Comedy Club.

As he went through how he did it, O’Brien did not look the least bit remorseful for his actions. As I got O’Brien processed, he seemed relieved to not have Leno’s presence in his life anymore. Nobody that I have met throughout this investigation seemed mournful of Leno’s death. In fact, during the interview with Jimmy Kimmel I observed that he did not look sorrowful of Leno’s passing. He said that after all the chaos that had occurred during his reign over NBC even people within the cartel were relieved when Leno announced he was going to retire. As for Leno’s murder, Kimmel told me that everyone knew that Leno was going to be killed one day. It was just one of things that was bound to happen.


End file.
